Sexist society
Kira lives in a society completely different from what one may be used to. In her world, everything has to have a practical purpose and to serve a greater good. Everyone has a fixed place in society and if they can’t fulfill the role they were given, they are considered useless. In the society where Kira lives, women are seen as manual labor and baby producers. Of a woman can’t work because she has some kind of physical disability or if she can’t find a man willing to marry her than she is seen as being useless. Kira is seen as being useless and she even portrays herself as such. Kira is a skilled storyteller and a talented weaver but because she doesn’t see herself as being a useful person because she doesn’t fit the pattern set up by the village.
Laughing children
When Kira decides to return home from the place where she took her mother’s body, she sees a group of children playing happily on the fields, laughing without a care in the world. Kira looks at them from a distance and thinks sadly about how she was never to experience the things those children were feeling. For Kira, those children were the image of children living their perfect childhood, being healthy enough to enjoy life and to run, things Kira was never able to do because of her legs.
Weaving shed
After the Elder decide that Kira will live in the Edifice, she goes to get what things were saved from the fire. Kira also passes by the weaving shed where she used to work and there she finds that one of the women who used to weave broke her arms. One of the women in the shed who was working noted amused that the woman who broke her arms will be most likely taken to the Field and let to die despite being a mother to five children. Through this scene, the author portrays the society where Kira lives as a cruel one, as a society that doesn’t care about the well-being of a person or of that person has or not a family. What is important for them is that the person is question is no longer useful so he or she must be eliminated.
Luxury
When Kira is asked to move into the edifice, she is allowed to live in quarters that are completely different from what she was used to. The room give to Kira is spacious, has a bed and windows, basic elements in a normal house but things not found in the house where Kira used to live. Kira is amazed by the new sight and she doesn’t know how to properly use the appliances in her room. What the author wants to emphasize through this image is the idea that Kira lived in a poor society, so poor in fact that the notion of a windows and toilets were considered luxuries only a minority could afford.
